Wed, 07 Oct 2026 11:15:03 -0700WeeblyTue, 06 Oct 2026 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.1stpreschurchionia.com/sermons/john-159-17Law as Gospel  

Most of you no doubt have heard the saying: "if you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. And if you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no brain."
 
No one knows who said this first. Some have insisted Winston Churchill, the great British statesman from the Second World War era. But the Churchill Center has confirmed there is no record of him ever saying it.
 
The phrase most likely originates from nineteenth-century French author Jules Claretie, who, commenting on his own political scene, wrote:
 
“He who does not support the French republic when he is 25 casts doubt on the generosity of his soul. But he who continues this support after 30 casts doubt on the soundness of his mind.”
 
Now it is not my intention this morning to engage you in a debate about political definitions. Instead, I want to suggest that the saying serves as an analog to how we regard the Ten Commandments.
 
When we are young, we find them restrictive, even coercive. People should be free to express themselves without boundaries. Our laws should protect and even enhance their freedoms.
 
But when we are old, we find those boundaries to be reassuring. What we once resisted, even distrusted, we now welcome. Even if people don't realize it themselves, the Commandments are for their own good. They are a constructive force in society.
 
Now we may be inclined to believe that that is how Israel experienced them too, that when she was young, she regarded the Commandments as oppressive, that only when she was older did she appreciate the wisdom in boundaries.
 
But that is not the case at all. On the contrary, she could only find the Commandments to be liberating.
 
How could she not? For God disclosed himself to the people as a God who liberates, as a God who frees. "I am the God who brought you up out of land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery."
 
God is as God does. That is a basic axiom of the faith of ancient Israel. They know God insofar as God has acted for them, on their behalf. It is the basis and foundation of their thanksgiving and praise. "Come, dear friends, and let me tell you what the Lord has done for me."
 
Parenthetically, we follow their lead in our call to worship, with which our liturgy begins. Our worship is above all a celebration of the goodness of God, as disclosed in God’s actions on our behalf, which we proclaim in Word and song.
 
Let us be clear. The commandments were not terrible burdens placed on a free people; they were gifts given to a rescued people. If that is hard for us to grasp, we have only to imagine how life was like for them prior to that rescue.
 
They sweltered under the hot Egyptian sun, laboring under the whip of their harsh taskmasters, who forced them to meet their daily quota of bricks.
 
For bricks were needed for the construction of Pithom and Raamses, the two store cities built by the Israelites under Egyptian rule. And when they groaned under their oppression, the taskmasters only drove them harder.
 
For Pharoah had ordered them to deny to the laborers straw for mixing with clay to make the bricks, while demanding the same quota.
 
Slavery is exploitative. It does not value human beings as ends in themselves; it reduces them only to means. In robbing them of their agency, it deprives them of their dignity.
 
Israel knew a master who subjected them to slavery, who exploited and crushed them. But now she was to meet a new master, a new Lord, who does not use his people but cherishes them as his treasured possession.
 
His intention for them is good. He wills to remake them from slaves into a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, bestowing on them a dignity that far exceeds that which they had before their conscription into slavery.  
 
And how does God rebuild a people that have been exploited and abused? He gives them commandments that are intended to restore what Pharaoh and their Egyptian slave masters had taken from them.
 
But before we can bring this point out, we have to be clear about what we have before us.
 
Most Bible students divide the Ten Commandments into two halves. That is why we speak of the two tablets of the Law.
 
The first half relates to God.
 
Remember, God rescued the people for the purpose of making them his very own. He enters into covenant with them. From God Israel can expect provision, protection, and deliverance. From Israel God expects loyalty, dedication, and exclusive worship.
 
Hence the first two commandments: You shall have no other gods before me (1). And you shall not make for yourselves a graven image (2).  
 
Let’s pause here to consider what these two commandments restore to the people.
 
The first restores their worship. In Egypt, their worship had been coerced, directed toward false gods, and entangled with the demands of their oppressors.
 
Now God gives it back to them. He teaches them to direct their devotion to the One who rescued them, the One who cherishes them, and calls them his treasured possession.
 
The second restores their imagination. Under Pharaoh, images and idols filled their mental landscape, shaping how they saw the divine and how they understood power.
 
God forbids such images not to restrict them but to free them. He will not allow their imagination to be warped by the idols of Egypt. He teaches them to see him as he truly is, not as the gods of Egypt were portrayed.
 
Proper worship is first in order of priority, because it decides everything else about us. The saying, “we are what we worship,” is no less true today than it was then. Worship of the creature degrades human beings. Worship of the true God ennobles them.
 
This, in fact, is the point that Paul argues in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. People have exchanged the truth of God for what is false, even though God has left a witness to himself in what he has created. This exchange has led to bad consequences.
 
When worship is misdirected, life gets misdirected. When anything is put in place of the Creator, human beings lose their bearings. Their thinking becomes futile, their hearts grow dark, and their desires become disordered. Their relationships become distorted. In short, they become less than what God intended them to be.
 
Israel knew this experience. She had lived under a master who embodied these distortions. Pharaoh was the product of false worship, and he imposed its consequences on others.
 
Now God rescues Israel from that world and begins to rebuild her. He starts by restoring her worship and her imagination, because everything else depends on these.
 
The third commandment tells us that the proper stance before the God we worship is reverence and respect. If we revere and respect God, then we will not carelessly misuse his name.
 
Under slavery, words were uttered in fear and frustration. They were used to beg, to flatter, to misrepresent the truth in order to avoid punishment.
 
Now God restores their speech. His will for them is to use their words in a way that reflects his character, his holiness. He wants their speech to be elevated, as is fitting for a people who belong to the great God, the creator of the heavens and the earth. 
 
The fourth commandment tells us to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. It is a day of rest dedicated to contemplating God as creator, and the universe as his creation
 
Slavery had taken rest from them entirely. Slavery is the antithesis of rest. They worked without relief to serve the interests of others. 
 
Now God restores their rest. He gives them a day on which to cease from their labor, a day that reminds them that their worth does not depend on their productivity, but on their status as God’s own dear people.
 
Rest is a sign of a free people. It is the weekly witness that they belong to a Lord who does not exploit them.
 
The fifth commandment begins the second table of the Law. If the first table tells us how to relate to God, the second table tells us how to relate to one another.
 
“Honor your father and mother, so that your days may be long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” 
 
The slaveowners treat the family lives of their slaves with contempt. We have all read or seen on TV stories about how husbands were separated from wives, parents from children, at the slave auction block.
 
Pharaoh did not care about the bond between parents and their children. When he saw that the Israelites were becoming too numerous in the land, he committed an unspeakable act of cruelty: he issued the order to kill all the male children born to Israelite women.
 
That is not how God sees family life. Now he teaches the people to honor the family relationships that he has established, beginning with the basic and most formative one. He restores the dignity of family life and the stability of the household, so that Israel may flourish as a people.
 
The sixth commandment forbids murder. Now the life of a slave is cheap. When he is no longer useful, he is cast aside, left to die, if not disposed of outright. His worth is measured only by what he can produce.
 
Pharaoh treated Israel this way. When he was threatened by their growing numbers, he ordered the killing of their sons. He treated their lives as expendable, useful only insofar as they served his purposes, the purposes of his nation.
 
This commandment restores the inviolability of life. God teaches Israel that the life of a human being is precious, because each is created in God’s image.
 
For this reason, no one is to take the life of another for sake of convenience or advantage. No one is to kill in a fit of anger or revenge. The sixth commandment reestablishes the sanctity of life in a community that had lived under a master who disregarded it.
 
The seventh commandment forbids adultery. We have already seen God’s care for the family in connection with the fifth commandment. The relationship between husband and wife is the foundation of the family.
 
This relationship is meant to be occasion of great joy. Remember that Adam in the Garden burst out in song when God presented to him the woman, whom he had taken from his side.
 
The life of the slave is too unstable to form this bond—a bond so critical to his happiness and well-being. Nor did his owner care, since the interest of his slave was subordinate to his own.
 
In freeing his people, God restores to them the freedom to marry. He teaches them to honor the bond between husband and wife, to protect it and to preserve it.
 
Marriage is not a temporary arrangement, to be dissolved when it no longer serves one’s interest. It is a bond meant to reflect God’s own covenant faithfulness.
 
The commandment serves to reestablish the stability of the household and the trust that holds a community together.
 
The eighth commandment forbids stealing. Slavery is a form of theft. In fact, slavery is nothing less than institutionalized theft.
 
The time, skill, and energy of the slave is taken from him without compensation. His labor enriches others while leaving him with nothing.
 
God restores the integrity of labor and property. He teaches Israel that what belongs to another is not to be taken, seized, or appropriated.
 
The fruit of one’s labor is to be enjoyed, not stolen.
 
So the eighth commandment reestablishes fairness, honesty, and respect within the community — a community that had been mutilated by a system in which theft was woven into the very fabric of life.
 
The ninth commandment tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbor.
 
We have already seen that it is God’s will to restore the speech of his people. They are to speak truthfully concerning God. But this is to affect all their speech — about God, about one another, and about their world.
 
The link between the third and the ninth commandment is seen in our court ritual, in which the one who is to testify places his hand on the Bible and swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
 
Speech among slaves is instrumentalized. It is used to secure one’s own advantage or one’s safety. Speech is motivated by fear, coercion, or the need to avoid punishment. Slaves say anything to survive.
 
Now God restores truthfulness. He teaches Israel to speak honestly about one another, to protect the reputation of their neighbor, and to refuse the distortions that destroy trust.
 
So this commandment reestablishes integrity within the community — a community that had lived under a system where truth was often dangerous and falsehood was a means of survival.
 
That counts nine. The tenth one stands on its own. It forbids us to covet.
 
Put in other words, it warns us not to envy. Bible students have pointed out that only if we succeed in obeying this one commandment can we keep the rest of the commandments. It is all-embracing. That is why is stands on its own.
 
Envy led Cain to murder Abel. Envy made Abraham and Isaac fear for their lives because they were married to beautiful women. Envy led Joseph’s brothers to hate him and sell him into slavery.
 
It is envy that leads to adultery, theft and false testimony, and it was envy of their neighbors that led Israel time and again to abandon God in favor of the pagan idols and practices of the time.
 
And envy led those tenants in our gospel lesson to seize and kill the landowner’s son, whom he sent to collect the produce. 
 
And that leads us to the following troubling observation. Israel did not keep the commandments.
 
They failed to keep them almost as soon as they received them. They broke the covenant and forgot the God who rescued them.
 
To be responsible before the Lord of the universe is awesome, and to be a member of God’s covenant people is a demanding privilege.
 
But it is one that God’s people did not and do not uphold.
 
But there is good news. Martin Luther reminded the church that the Law is meant to show us that we are lawbreakers. And when we realize we are lawbreakers, we see our need for forgiveness, which the lawgiver extends to us for the sake of Christ.
 
But John Calvin reminded the church that the Law not only convicts us of sin. God renews us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we become a people who love God’s law, see God’s goodness reflected in it, and joyfully obey it in gratitude for his goodness.
 
God renews us in view of the new covenant that he makes with us. On this World Communion Sunday, it is appropriate for us to conclude here.
 
Later in our liturgy, we will hear the words of Jesus: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” These words have real weight. With them, Jesus announces that the covenant between God and God’s people is renewed.
 
This is the good news that we proclaim every time we have communion. To break the commandments is to violate the terms of the covenant. Israel did this. We did this. But God does not want our disobedience to separate us from him. That is why, for Jesus’ sake, he forgives us and renews us, so that we may rejoice in him and find delight in his ways. Amen.
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